Market survey data collection systems are well known in the art. One of the more common prior art systems for collecting such data involves the use of survey booklets or questionnaires which are mailed to a diverse group of panelists, individually handwritten into by the panelists to record the survey data relating to their particular shopping habits for various identified products, mailed back to the survey company by the panelists where the data is keypunched and then read into a data processor or computer for accumulative processing of all of this data. This procedure, although satisfactory under most circumstances, is time consuming, costly and provides many opportunities for erroneous data entry due to carelessness either by the panelist who is writing in the data by hand or by the keypunch operator who is subsequently encoding the handwritten data. With the advent of electronic inventory control and supermarket scanners there has been considerable interest in bringing market data collection into the electronic age. An example of such prior art attempts is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,942,157 and 4,016,542 which relate to electronic notebooks, such as marketed under the name SCOREPAD by Azurdata Inc., for electronically collecting data, such as for inventory control, for subsequent transmission to a central computer. SCOREPAD terminals also employ a scanning wand in certain instances for inputting UPC product code type data. However, to applicants' knowledge, such a system has not been employed in connection with electronic collection of market survey data from diverse panelists, such as in the home, nor do such systems employ an interactive prompt message sequence, such as one responsive to confirmation of proper data entry in order to minimize the potential for erroneous data entry.
The use of scanning wands or optical readers, because of the standardized UPC product codes, has become popular in electronic inventory control systems in an effort to both minimize error and accelerate entry of UPC and other types of product code data. An example of such prior art scanning systems is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,118,687 and 3,665,164, both of which are point-of-sale type systems and neither of which is involved with independent electronic data collection from diverse panelists for accumulative central processing, such as where the independent data collection is in response to an interactive prompt message sequence, such as one responsive to confirmation of proper data entry in order to minimize the potential for erroneous data entry. Other prior art OCR scanning systems, per se, by way of example, are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,143,358; 4,088,981; 3,826,900; 3,798,421; 3,752,958; 3,717,750; 3,760,162; 4,025,766 and 3,876,863 while U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,072,859 and 4,158,194 disclose prior art systems similar to U.S. Pat. No. 4,118,687. None of these prior art data collection systems known to applicants, however, employ an optical scanner as the sole data input device for both UPC product code type data and supplementary market survey data, nor employs the aforementioned prompt message interaction within the data base.
Thus, despite the widespread use of electronics over at least the past ten years in connection with market type data and despite the problems inherent in the conventional market survey data collection methods employing handwritten questionnaires, no satisfactory prior art system or method known to applicants has been developed which enables rapid collection at a central location of market survey data independently collected at a plurality of diverse locations for accumulative processing with minimal error potential.
These disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the present invention.